Ep. 21 : MPDX Backstory

Join us as we chat everything MPDX with the people behind MPDX, Scott Parros and Keely Sleight. 

MPDX Tutorials can be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y1tiOm84KYE

Transcript

Michele Davis: 0:23

Welcome to the Cru MPD podcast with Katie Johnson and Michele Davis. We love that the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. We are driven to equip and inspire Christian workers to be Christ centered, fully funded, and financially faithful, so that missionary staff can come alongside all people to help them to know Jesus. This process is more widely known as ministry partner development, or MPD for short.

Katie Johnson: 0:53

Alright, welcome to the show. We are excited today to have a couple of staff from the MPDX team. We have Keely Sleight and Scott Parros, and they are here just to share more about MPDX and why we use it as staff. And so Hi guys, welcome to the podcast. (Hello. Hi.) Could we start in just can you guys introduce yourselves and share a little bit of your story and maybe some of your staff story?

Scott Parros: 1:22

Sure. Like you said, Katie. I'm Scott Parros. My official title is MPDX product manager. I've been on staff with Cru for 21 years I had the fun and experience of joining in the 50th anniversary year at our Cru staff conference in 2001. I work out of the headquarters here in Orlando, Florida. I've been with our IT organization called Digital Products and Services for the last 16 years. And before that I was serving in campus ministry in the Nashville area as part of a catalytic team. And I did a little bit of work overseas in East Asia as well. So that's me.

Keely Sleight: 2:07

Keely. I'm Keely Sleight. I've been on staff for about seven years recently married maiden name Sawyer. I started out as campus with the Lifelines northeast team, so the outdoor Ministry of group and we were in central New Hampshire for a while, but in 2018, in the fall, I went down and joined Lake Hart Stint. It's like a staff development year and joined the MPX team. And my official title is IT Product Specialist with MPDX. And I do a lot of the MPDX Communications. Now I'm based in Portland, Maine, where I can stay part time campus, but also do predominantly MPDX work. And I've been with the team for about three years.

Katie Johnson: 2:56

Awesome. Well, welcome, guys. We're excited to have you on the podcast today talking about MPDX Can we start by...can you guys just share? Where did MPX come from? Can you share some of the history and how it came about? Yeah, and some the why, like, where did it come from behind MPDX?

Scott Parros: 3:16

Yeah, sure. So, you know, Cru has been around for, you know, 70 plus years and have a lot of staff raising support. And, you know, as technology started to come online a few decades ago, we realized we needed a tool to help staff raise their support to connect with ministry partners, keep track of their information, all that good stuff. And actually, the first tool that was ever created to help with that was a tool called TNT MPD created by actually a Cru developer 20 or so years ago, and it served a lot of a lot of the staff especially Cru very well for for time, but there was some increasing concerns with TNT MPD, about data security, a lot of information was kind of stored on a person's personal computer. And so they wanted to have what what's kind of known more as kind of a cloud based solution, something where the, all the information that lives in the in your database could be kind of protected. And so that led to the development of MPX. So it's a little more secure solution with with still all the same, they tried to essentially develop MPDX to model a lot of the same functionality within TNT MPD so that people it would hopefully be a smoother transition. I don't know that we completely...it's not completely the same as TNT MPD I'm sure a lot of longtime TNT MPD users would probably happily share some of the differences but but it's a continual evolving tool, we're constantly adding new features. We're currently in the middle of rewriting the user interface. So that it's hopefully a little easier to use some of the filters and, and some of the other different parts of the, of the application.

Katie Johnson: 5:17

That's awesome. I didn't even know that the reason it came about was to keep information more secure. I love MPDX. And I think it is a great tool. And so I'm glad it came about in that way. And it makes sense, we want to keep our partners information secure, for sure. And so that's great. Um, so, in that kind of realm, like, why do we ask staff to use MPDX? What is the purpose?

Scott Parros: 5:49

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think, you know, lots of different users have kind of different needs. But I think, ultimately, you know, the heart of MPD is to make connections, you know, with your partners, so that you can give them vision, so that they can be partners kind of for a lifetime. And the best way to do that is, of course, is to keep kind of a record of who those people are, you know, by creating contacts in MPDX. And then as you get to know them, obviously, you know, when you first get to know them, you need to have contact information, you know, you need to have their email or phone number or, you know, address that sort of thing. And then as they give, you know, you get information about how they're giving. And so all that is helpful, but then, you know, there's also, you know, one of the big features in MPDX is the notes feature where as you make connections with your partners, either on an MPD trip or over the phone or text message. And as you learn different things about, you know, maybe what they're passionate about. You learn about their job, you learn about their family, you learn about hobbies, you can kind of record all that, and it can help help the next time you connect to them. Because obviously, if you got, you know, 200 people in your on your in your contact list, it can be hard to remember who, what did I talk about with this person, you know, six months ago or a year ago. And so the ability to kind of record that all in one place as a quick reference, the next time you want to connect with them, helps you kind of build that relationship so that you can have a partnership for a lifetime.

Katie Johnson: 7:27

Yes, I feel like that's so important, like digital note cards, right? And so when you see someone again, you're not wondering if you're saying the right thing, or, you know, calling their children the right names, but you have that information written down? I feel like that's so important, Keely. Why? Why MPDX? Why do you think Cru staff should use MPDX?

Keely Sleight: 7:52

Um, my answer for why Cru Staff and why I use it is the same. Like it helps me stay organized so that I can stay relational. Otherwise, my information would be chaos. And I would waste a lot of time trying to figure out where I am. And when I talked to the person last, I think is a big one is I want to know the details. Like when did I thank them? When what is their current address? Did it change? Like if they changed, I want to check in and see how the move is going. Because moving is difficult. Yeah, just the ability to stay relational because you know what's happening and who to talk to next and kind of focus. See the specific thing instead of overwhelming information?

Katie Johnson: 8:36

Mm hmm. You Yes. So good. I feel like we see a lot of numbers and MPDX, but the heart behind it is the relational piece, right? So we want to care for our partners well, and like you guys said, you literally can't remember everything about 200 or more people, depending on how many partners you have. You're just not capable of that. And so it really helps you to care for your partners really well. That's great. What would you guys say? If you had to choose one thing? I know it might be hard, because this is like your baby. Right? But if you had to choose one thing, what is your favorite feature of MPDX right now? Or what are some features coming? If you're allowed to spill the beans on things that might be coming?

Scott Parros: 9:21

Yeah, um, so you know, it's interesting, as I thought, as I think about that question, you know, there's, there's obviously different audiences within MPDX. You know, there's people who are doing their initial MPD. And I think, so I'll kind of answer in two ways, because for new staff, I feel like the the most important feature is the Contact Flows View. When you go to your contact view in MPDX. There's kind of two toggles, and most people don't maybe aren't aware of this. There's a there's a button where it starts out as the List View, where it's just all of your partner's names in a list and you just can scroll down, you can actually flip it to what's called a Flows View. And you can actually, it actually puts all of your contacts in columns essentially. And it allows it actually has a drag and drop feature to it, where you can essentially put all of your contacts in a, I need to contact them status. And then as you contact them and make appointments, you can move them to the appointment column. And then as once you've made the appointment with them, and you challenge them to join your team, you could have them join, you could move them to the to the column where they become a financial partner, or a special partner or a prayer partner, whatever it might be, and then so it's a really simple way for you to move through all of your contacts and move them through the process until you've either gotten them to join your team or, or become a prayer partner or part of your prayer letter list. So that's what I would, that's my favorite feature for new staff. As far as for senior staff, I would say, you know, kind of the ability to use tags, essentially. And so, obviously, as you go about your staff career, you know, you do your initial support raising and, you know, out of your 200 contacts that you may come up with initially, you know, maybe 50 of them become partners, you know, on a monthly basis, you know, someone may or may become special gift partners. But then the vast majority of them become prayer partners, they're on your prayer letter list. And so, you know, two years down the line after your initial support, raising, you know, it's great to go back and revisit that list of, you know, 100, and some people that are on your prayer letter list, who you never...who weren't able to join your team, initially, maybe you know, a couple, two, three years down the line, you can then start this, go, "I'm going to tag some of these people, and I'm going to follow up with them. And I'm going to, you know, challenge, you know, 10 of them this month to join my team." And, you know, maybe a few months down the line, when I have some more time in between ministry assignments, I can challenge a few more and so that that tagging and being able to kind of filter your list down a little bit. I think it's another great feature of MPDX.

Katie Johnson: 12:11

Yes, okay, if if the people listening here do not know what Flow View is, you need to try it out. And you need to see what it is for yourself, because it is so good. And when that was rolled out, I was so excited because I think I'm a very visual person. And so seeing it go from one category to another is so helpful for me. And so if people want to, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, because I want people to know where to find Flows View. So do we have tutorials or anything like that, that can show people where that is on MPDX? If they can't find it?

Scott Parros: 12:50

Yeah, so that's a great question, Katie. So we do have a number of resources on YouTube, you can actually go to YouTube and simply type in MPDX. And it will bring you to a list of tutorial videos. And one of those tutorial videos is actually a field staff actually came to us one time and gave us a training video essentially on how to use the flows view from his perspective. So it's not, it wasn't some HQ person, saying this is how you should do it from on high. It was actually someone who had figured out on his own, who's a field staff guy. And he narrates maybe like 10 minutes of how to set it up, and how he uses it. And so I think that would be a great resource for people to learn more about the philosophy.

Katie Johnson: 13:37

That's great. We'll try to link that in the show notes too. So that way people can find it easily.

Keely Sleight: 13:42

Canada back of what Scott said, We also do a monthly communication that people can sign up to get called MPDX field notes. And we've done a few specialty ones on how to use the MPDX flows view. And we can link those as well to the podcast.

Katie Johnson: 14:00

Yes, yes, he will definitely have those links to That's great. Thank you. Kelly, what are some of your favorite features of MPDX?

Keely Sleight: 14:09

That's kind of a hard question...I think probably my favorite fall into the category of like working in tracking ongoing support. And I work full time and MPD is a regular part of what I'm working on. And MPDX keeps me sane and organized. So I think my favorite feature is it's actually for MPD coaching, which overlaps some with initial MPD when people are raising like their initial support to work towards their assignment, and doing so full time. There's this feature called coaching where you can share coaching access to your account with another staff person and what I've done for ongoing at the time. So when I have an MPD coach, I'll share it with a coach so they can kind of see my progress. But right now I actually have a staff friend that I'm close to and I use that as an accountability system. So I share a coaching access with her, tell her "Hey, I'm writing this many thank you notes this week, and I'm sending my newsletter," and then she can see without seeing any of my contact info, that, "Oh, you didn't send a prayer letter Oh, you did do your thank you notes." So kind of related to the coaching feature is the ability to log sending a newsletter from the dashboard. That's a lifesaver. I use it all the time. There's this section that has a little piece where you can say log newsletter, and say, email and or letter, physical, and the date and the name of the newsletter if you title them. And that saves a lot of time.

Katie Johnson: 15:47

Yes, I love that you share your account with someone else on staff. And we've been talking a little bit here on the podcast and in general in the MPD world more about what it looks like to do MPD and community. And I feel like this could be a great piece to add to that if you have a group of staff friends that you're meeting with regularly to talk about your MPD. And just your plans for MPD. As you're on staff, sharing your MPDX account is such a good idea so that people can see, it keeps you accountable to right, so you have to actually log tasks and put information in (Exactly.) And so I think that's great. Um, I'm going to add a question here. So sorry if this catches you guys off guard. But I'm curious, what if a staff person looks at MPDX. And it's just so overwhelmed, because they haven't kept it up to date. They don't know where to start. And it just feels impossible to kind of organize and figure out what would you tell them?

Scott Parros: 16:44

Yeah, so that's, that's a That's a great question. You know, I think it can be overwhelming if you've got, you know, so obviously, in MPX, we have some notifications that can essentially, kind of automatically create tasks. So one, just kind of probably a couple steps, I would say the first step is to go and look at your notifications, and maybe clear them all out. Either deselect all of them, or deselect all and then maybe pick one or two that you think are really important you like if somebody gives a first gift or something like that, you always obviously want to know that. So you can send a thank you, but be be a good curator of your notifications. And then the second thing is, is that yeah, if you have a big long, long backlog of tasks, there's a there's a feature within MPDX, where you can select them all and just delete them, you know, complete them or whatever. And again, I would say just start fresh and keep it...so that you only do the tasks that you know you're going to do. And and and do it in bite sized chunks, you know, never schedule out 10 or 15 tasks, schedule two or three. Say, that's what I'm going to focus on to get done in the next day or the next week, you know, however much time you have, and and really keep it down to bite sized chunks.

Katie Johnson: 18:10

Yes, that is so freeing. Right? Just just start start over start clear. Start clean, right. Hopefully that'll help staff to feel freer, right? Like easier to get into and PDX if they haven't been in in a long time. Keely, would you add anything to that?

Keely Sleight: 18:28

Yeah, I would say kind of with that if you have tasks created. And that's the thing that's overwhelming you, but you have a particular type of tasks that you want to do in mind. Say you're just doing thank you notes, you can filter by task type. And so if today's goal is to make calls because you really want to connect with a few people, you can filter by calls, look at the current tasks and see the ministry partners name right there. And then select from that list and just just see what do we want to see using filters.

Katie Johnson: 19:02

That's great. Um, MPDX can do so many things. So I feel like you guys are saying make it work for you, right? And do what you need to do. If there was one thing that you could have all staff do on MPDX and have them all use, what would it be? What feature would it be?

Scott Parros: 19:23

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a big question. But I recently had a conversation with a senior staff who is supremely good at raising personal support. And he just mentioned, you know, this idea of, so it's kind of there's kind of two phases to what he did. Number one, he just kind of knows his partners really well over the course of the years he's had, he's been very intentional about when he talks with them, he finds out what's going on in their lives. He doesn't just, you know, regurgitate all these ministry stories about, hey, what am I as a staff doing? So that Bill feel compelled to give to me. He says, you know what's going on in your life? What are you passionate about? He records that in the notes feature. And then, as he's got to know, people when, you know, he was he said he was watching a ballgame over New Year's, New Year's Eve. And one of the one of the schools that was playing, he knew Oh, he, one of his best partners, went to that school. So he just texted him said, Hey, I'm watching the ballgame with your team on it. And just thought I'd you know, say, you know, go go big blue, or whatever it was, you know, one of the, whenever the schools were, and, and then you know, so he records...he can record that stuff in MPDX, and then he can record those little interactions, and it was just a five minute text. And he, but he could just note that, hey, I texted this person. And they texted back and, and they said, you know, please pray for me, I'm, you know, I'm struggling with my job or whatever. And so those are the, that's what I would say is just be diligent to whenever you have a meaningful connection, put that task in there. And just record, you know, the, the the cool interaction you have, or the information that you learn about that, that donor.

Keely Sleight: 21:17

I was gonna say, similarly, the notes section, like just remembering that that's the primary thing is like, knowing who is connected to your ministry, and like, what they're passionate about, and why, and remembering details about them and their ministries to because their day to day life is just as much ministry as ours, was just a little bit less official. So kind of along with that, I think knowing the idea that you can track prayer requests, and you can log prayer requests tasks in MPDX, and set it up to pray at a specific time in the same way you'd set up an appointment. And so knowing what your prayer ministry partners per requests are, and kind of keeping those in your line of sight. So that can be a recurring thing that you notice and have as part of your just regular routines, I think is also super important. And I mean, everything, but like prayer letters as well, like I really like it matters to me a lot to know, when my prayer letters are going out. And then the one happened most recently. So logging them from the dashboard or logging them from the top. If I log no other tasks in a month, that is what I keep track of to make sure that they know what's going on. And they can be praying for ministry as well.

Katie Johnson: 22:35

I love that. I don't know if I even knew about the prayer request task. That's terrible. I know, I should have known. Now I want to get on and do it for myself and use that feature. That's great. Um, okay, so one of the last questions I have if people have questions about MPDX, or maybe they run into an issue, where do they go for help with MPDX? We talked about some of the videos, but beyond that, where would they go for help?

Scott Parros: 23:05

Yeah, so on the corner of the bottom right corner of every screen, you go to an MPDX, there's a little magnifying glass and and that magnifying glass, when you click on it has two great features. Number one, it brings up a list of help articles. And you can actually type in, you know, a keyword that says, you know, tags or partner giving analysis report, you know, something like that you can you can type in a keyword and it can bring you up a help article that explains, you know, about that particular topic that you want to know more about. And then if after the fact, after the fact that you've read the article, you still have questions, you can actually...there's another feature that that magnifying glass does where you haven't asked me to read, it will essentially send an email of whatever you type up to our MPDX support team that can then respond directly to your questions or your your requests for new feature, or if there's a bug that you found, we can we can respond to that.

Katie Johnson: 24:09

So guys, um, you mentioned, you know, taking notes and logging these tasks as you talk with partners. I know that MPDX has a mobile app, can you just share more about that and how that can help in this process of tracking partners and

Scott Parros: 24:25

Yeah, I think one of the big, you know, one of the tasks? big benefits of the app over kind of the web version of MPDX is that as you go into MPDX on the on the mobile app, whether it's iOS or Android, and you go to a contact, you can see you know, a phone number and email, you just tap on the phone number. It can give you the ability to essentially to immediately bring them up and call them and then once you're done with the call, it will automatically bring up a little kind of pop up window that will allow you to record an note or two, from that conversation that you just had with that partner. Same. Same is true for texting a partner or emailing a partner all that can you can do very quickly and easily from your, from the app on the phone or device. And then you can quickly record the notes for that.

Katie Johnson: 25:18

That's amazing. And it automatically records the task, correct? (Correct.) That's amazing. I feel like I just want that clapping emoji, as you said that, you know, yes, everyone needs to use this. So if you don't have the MPDX app, you can download that on your phone. And, and try it out. I feel like that could really help people who, you know, don't want to get their laptop out every time to log a task or put a note in so um, well guys, any last words or anything else you want to share about MPDX before we go for today?

Keely Sleight: 25:51

kind of on the note of the mobile app, I use it a lot for like actually getting places. And if I have somebody address logged in there, and I want to head there, I can go into MPDX and click on directions right from the contact. And if I've got it loaded, it pulls up Maps, and then I can drive and know where I'm going, is a big one.

Katie Johnson: 26:11

That's such a good idea. Yes. I feel like I have someone one of my partner's family members. This is really sad. I just forget their address all the time. And I actually do go into MPDX mobile app and get their address from there you guys if I'm sending them something. It's kind of like a virtual address book, which, beyond your phone contacts, which I don't ever put addresses in my phone contact. So I feel like MPDX app is so helpful in that. So cool. Well, thank you guys so much for coming and joining us. We really appreciate it and we're excited to continue to hear how MPDX is developing and changing and we're excited to see our staff continue to use it and really leverage how it could help them in their MPD journey. So thanks so much for coming.